During use of a square baler, it is sometimes necessary in the middle of a task to drive the baler over a public road and for this it is required, for safety, to close the bale case by raising the discharge chute. However, if the last completed bale is jutting out of the bale case, it can interfere with the raising of the chute making it necessary for it first to be ejected. For this reason, it is desirable under some circumstance to be able to eject only the last completed bale. In other situations, it is required to eject the entire contents of the bale case after a still incomplete bale (shorter than the desired length) has been tied.
WO96/29195 discloses a square baler which, instead of relying solely on the compacting plunger to unload tied bales from the bale case, comprises an auxiliary ejector system to enable the operator to off-load completed bales. The ejector system comprises a shuttle assembly housed within hollow rails of the bale case. The shuttle assembly consists of a frame that is reciprocated in the direction of movement of the compacting plunger and has dogs projecting upwards from it to engage in the underside of the bales. The dogs grip the bale only during the forward stroke of the shuttle assembly, that is to say when it is moving towards the discharge outlet of the bale case, and slip relative to the underside of the bale during the return stroke. In this way, the reciprocation of the shuttle assembly incrementally advances the bales towards the discharge outlet.
The ejector mechanism of WO96/29195 is controllable to enable the operator to select whether to discharge only the last bale in the bale case (the one nearest the discharge outlet) or both the last bale and the one before it. To achieve this, the dogs are arranged on the shuttle in a longitudinally extending series and at least some of the dogs are controllable by the operator using a manual selector assembly so that the controlled dogs may be positioned either to extend into the bale case or to be retracted from it.
The ejector system of WO96/29195 suffers from the disadvantage that the operator needs first to inspect the position of the bales in the bale case in order to decide on which of the dogs to activate.